Our Way: The Children’s Aid Society of Brant’s AOP Journey
Iona Sky, MSW
2012
“Anti-oppressive practice is not enough. We cannot decide when or when not to practice in a good way; it must be about living – anti-oppressive living”. (Kundouqk & Qwul’sih’yah’maht, 2009, p.35)
This paper is going to illustrate how the Children’s Aid Society of Brant (Brant CAS) has organizationally created various models and structures aimed at embedding an anti-oppressive perspective into the fabric of the agency, which in turn influences the delivery of anti-oppressive practice.
An anti-oppressive perspective is paramount to the delivery of anti-oppressive practice, since a person’s perspective is the lens through which they view and understand the world, which in turn influences the service delivery they provide to families. An anti-oppressive perspective according to the Child Welfare Anti-Oppression Roundtable (2009) “requires an understanding of the dynamics of privilege, power, oppression and social location. An anti-oppression perspective recognizes how our social identities impact our interactions with both service users and colleagues“ (p.7). Dumbrill (as cited in Child Welfare Anti-Oppression Roundtable, 2009) defines anti-oppressive practice as being “concerned with eradicating social injustice perpetuated by societal structural inequalities, particularly along the lines of race, gender, sexual orientation and identity, ability, age, class, occupation and social service usage” (p.2). Figure 1 illustrates how Brant CAS has set the expectation of all decisions and services being examined and offered through an anti-oppressive lens and that a keen understanding of anti-oppressive practice has to be interwoven into the fabric of the agency. Hence an anti-oppressive perspective surrounds the entire agency (as shown in Figure 1), as it is a guiding perspective and philosophy of service. This paper will examine each of the circles contained within the larger circle and how they intersect and are influenced by an overarching anti-oppressive perspective.
Valuing anti-oppressive practice should be a parallel process and should flow from every aspect and corner of an agency, starting from the agency’s mission statement.
The Children’s Aid Society of Brant will work with families and the community to safeguard a permanent, nurturing family for all children at risk of abuse, neglect or abandonment.
In response to our commitment to strengthen and value families, we will work to recognize and use the strengths of families in all assessment, decision-making, and actions.
We share with the community the responsibility for protecting children and strengthening families.
We will work in collaboration with the community to achieve this purpose.(Children’s Aid Society of Brant, 2011)
As evident from Brant CAS’ mission statement, working from a strengths-based collaborative approach with families and communities is valued and guides all of the work that is done, right from the front-line practitioners, to the accounting department, to the senior management level and finally to our Board of Directors. This is vitally important as it sets the stage and expectations of how staff will work together with families and our community to help promote child well-being.
A prime example of embedding an anti-oppressive perspective into the practice is how the agency works from a community based perspective. This commitment to community based child welfare is purposeful and based on the premise that having teams embedded in various communities throughout the county, enhances collaborative practice with families as it deepens workers’ understanding of the individual and systemic factors influencing families and communities.For example, our agency has teams based in geared-to-income housing complexes, in schools, in the hospital, in the local women’s shelter, and in various other locations throughout the county.
Working from a community based perspective does not just entail moving one’s office to a location in the community, it involves becoming a part of the fabric of that community and working with families to help identify and advocate against, not only individual areas of oppression but also larger systemic issues, such as poverty. This is important for us to be aware of not only as child welfare workers, but also as social workers, as one of the tenants of our professional values is to be advocates and work towards social justice.
So what does that this look like in practice? In practice, community based work involves participating and engaging with the community, as you would in your own neighbourhood. It involves playing basketball with the kids during recess if you are a school-based worker or being a part of open houses or neighborhood cleanup events if you are based in a neighborhood centre, so that kids and parents see you there as a familiar face. This is key to working from an anti-oppressive perspective as it can help reduce some of the fear associated with a child welfare worker showing up at a parent’s door. If a parentknows a worker as “Frank the guy who played basketball with Johnny yesterday”, it is less scary than viewing the worker as “Frank the unknown scary child welfare worker who has the power to take Johnny away”.
Being a community based worker also entails changing the lens through which we view our work and not increasing our surveillance of families, but seeing the strengths and assets of a community and increasing our visibility and engagement with families as an ally. We should be neighbors in the community…. neighbours who are concerned not only about the welfare of the community’s children, but also the welfare of the families and the community as a whole. Although our mandate identifies that our primary role is the welfare of children, children do not live in isolation of their family or community, and so our teams work from a holistic bottom-up (as opposed to the traditional top-down) approach with families and communities towards a shared goal and responsibility of children’swell-being. This shifts the responsibility of child welfare from a singular CAS bureaucratic perspective, to one of neighbours working together to care for their children and communities, since we cannot “protect” children as we leave our offices at the end of the day; families and communities protect their children, and it is our job to shift our thinking of doing silo “expert” driven work with individual families, to collaborative strengths-based anti-oppressive work with families and their communities to make this happen.
Community Developer “wanted to know how the presence of CAS workers impacted the community members. They responded with great positivity commenting on feeling supported with a good safety net. Community members added that they feel good about someone being there in times of struggle that they can trust to talk to”. Feedback from community members during a Community Advisory Board meeting”(Children’s Aid Society of Brant, 2011)
Brant CAS has also incorporated the Signs of Safety (Turnell & Edwards, 1999) approach as a way to engage with families in a more collaborative strength’s based manner. It is important to recognize that while we link anti-oppressive practice to Signs of Safety (SOS), SOS in itself is not a neutral or powerless approach. This approach is meant to be a solution-focused approach to working with families (Turnell & Edwards, 1999), but it is still agency-led. It is meant to reduce some of the power imbalances by working with families to safety plan for their children by using various tools such as the SOS Board, the 3 houses etc (Turnell & Edwards, 1999). These toolsuse appreciative inquiry (Signs of Safety Net, 2011) to identify the strengths of the family, concerns as it pertains to child safety, and safety planning for the children in question. In working with this model from an anti-oppressive lens, it is important for staff to clearly identify, and recognize that there are power imbalances inherent in this approach, as it is agency-led and is predicated on bottom lines set by workers. However, it also recognizes that families have strengths, and the solution and safety lies in the family and community, and not with the agency.
The agency has been a large proponent of Clinical Counselling (Dumbrill & Young, 2010) and the importance of recognizing that our work with families incorporates this method of intervention. With all the organizational structures and initiatives that I am outlining, an anti-oppressive practice framework has to be interwoven into the application of it. Clinical counseling provided by workers has to be embedded with a thorough understanding of oppression and anti-oppressive practice. Organizations can work towards enhancing workers’ sense of competence in this area in order to increase the likelihood that service will be provided in an anti-oppressive way. In practice, this involves developing different practice skills such as: valuing the knowledge of families, a commitment to transparency and clarity, being self-reflective and examining our knowledge and the roots of this knowledge, examining the lens with which we see the world and families, and broadening this lens from the individual struggles that families face to recognizing how different systemic issues impact families and how we can work as allies to fight against these areas of oppression (Dumbrill & Young, 2010).
These different models of practice and organizational structures are supported on an individual worker level to embed an anti-oppressive perspective into practice through Clinical Supervision (Children’s Aid Society of Brant, 2008). Clinical supervision is vitally important to examining our roles as child welfare workers and to help enhance our understanding and development of the practical skills needed to carry out anti-oppressive work. Clinical supervision should also be an expectation of all leaders in an organization,as it is a parallel process and should not only focus on front-line staff. It is essential for us all to take the time to self-reflect and examine not only ourselves and our practice, but also the different systemic issues that affect our work. Clinical supervision can help staff develop the different skills needed for clinical counseling, using the SOS approach as well as examining community-based practice.
Family Group Conferencing (Family Group Conferencing, 2011) is another method of operationalizing anti-oppressive practice thatBrant CAS has incorporated for a number of years. Family Group Conferencing (FGC) has come to be recognized as a leading way to address some of the power imbalances inherent in child welfare as it shares power by giving the decision making over to the family system to come up with the solution for a child. FGC differs from other methods of conferencing such as Signs of Safety as FGC is “family led” as opposed to “family involved” (Family Decision Making, 2011, p.3).
The voices of many who care will inevitably meet on the common ground of the child's best interest. This is by far the best forum for this type of situation and I wish it were available to more people. - Participant at FGC (Children’s Aid Society of Brant, 2011)
It included everyone in the family that had an interest in X & Y’s future and well-being. Everyone put aside past hurts/issues to come up with a plan for them. -Participant at FGC (Children’s Aid Society of Brant, 2011)
This meeting really brought us together to show us what really matters! Everyone put aside their differences to come and show X and Y how much we love them and how much they mean to everyone that showed up today.- Participants at FGC (Children’s Aid Society of Brant, 2011)
The Child Development Unit at Brant CAS works from an ecological approach to community development (Sky, 2008) in various areas of Brant County, including three geared-to-income housing complexes. This model is a clear example of putting an anti-oppressive perspective into practice, as it examines all the factors influencing communities and families and how the agency can act as allies to work with the communities towards addressing different areas of oppression. The Child Development Unit works in collaboration with protection teams to offer a myriad of early help services to families, childrenand youth through working with each unique community to identify the gifts and challenges that they each posses, and how they and the agency can work together towards increased child well-being. The agency views this layer of service as imperative to child welfare, as it provides multi-layered support to help improve outcomes for children and families in the context of their communities. In practice this looks like offering a range of supports to deal with systemic issues, such as poverty. For example, supports can range from instrumental ones such as the provision of breakfast programs, community kitchens, back-to-school programs etc, to larger supports to help increase social inclusion such as collaborating with service providers to offer opportunities such as recreational programs, skill development programs, literacy programs, etc.
These centres are a God-send to myself. They are less threatening than having to have groups at a more formal site….Being right in the neighbourhood makes it easy and convenient for me to access. (Parent who accesses services from a neighborhood resource centre, personal communication, n.d)
I started this group in May not because I had to. I had just moved to Brantford and was looking to make friends and get A around some other kids. I wasn’t sure how or where to start so I got on welfare and I had heard about a LEAP program. So I asked for it and I was introduced to X. She gave me this number for Children’s Aid. At first I was terrified, I mean CHILDREN’S AID! But when I thought about it, I’m not doing anything wrong so I tried it out. This program is the best thing I’ve ever done for me and my child. He looks forward to coming”. (Teen who attends the Teen Parenting Program, personal communication, n.d)
I first came to this group through the LEAP program. After I finished my hours I decided that it would be healthy for my kids and I to continue to come. My kids have other people their age to play with and it gave me chance to communicate with other parents. The staff here has helped me through a lot of difficult times and problems and has given me different advice that helped make my problem easier to solve. These are something I look back on and I am pleased with myself for trying to make my home life a better place for my children”.(Teen who attends the Teen Parenting Program, personal communication, n.d)
The agency is also a member of various community committees and initiatives aimed at addressing systemic issues of oppression. For example, staff are represented at committees charged with examining issues of poverty, homelessness, issues facing LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/trans) groups, immigrant issues, First Nations issues, issues facing groups with developmental challenges, etc.
Brant CAS has also created internal committees which examine issues of anti-oppression and diversity through the formation of the Diversity-AOP Committee, where members from all corners and levels of the organization meet to discuss oppression issues as they pertain to not only the families in our community, but also larger global issues that impact on child welfare as a whole.
Lastly, the agency also has a committee for all staff called the Agency Development Committee that has a representative from every team in the organization. This committee is essential to incorporating anti-oppressive practice into our work as it provides a voice from each corner of the agency to bring forth issues and ideas where we can improve as an organization, as well examine external issues that staff feel are important for our agency to address.
As this paper has illustrated, Brant CAS as an organization has created different purposeful ways to embed an anti-oppressive perspective into everyday practice. As every agency and individual embarking on their anti-oppression journey, this process is organic and takes time and commitment by everyone involved, as it is not only a framework, but a way by which to live our everyday lives. This is a continual process and we as an organization are working towards examining how we can incorporate the Anti-Oppression framework (Ontario Child Welfare Anti-Oppression Roundtable, 2010) into further embeddinganti-oppressive practiceinto our organization. Brant CAS, like every other agency or person embarking on their anti-oppression journey, has hits bumps on the road in this journey (such as resistance to change, or moving too fast resulting in some unintended consequences), and each of these bumps have taught staff important lessons about respecting the process and journey of this work. However, I am hopeful that the structures that have been outlined in this paper will continue to embed and interweave anti-oppressive practiceinto all facets of our work, so that we can continue on this journey together with and alongside the families and communities that we serve.
About the author
Iona Sky joined the Children’s Aid Society of Brant in 2001 after working and volunteering in the women’s services, developmental services and LGBT sectors. At Brant CAS, she has worked as a Family Service Worker, Community Developer and is now the Resource Development-AOP Manager. Her passions include working with and learning from families and diverse communities, so together we can work towards social justice for all.
Reference List
Child Welfare Anti-Oppression Roundtable. (2009). Anti-Oppression in Child Welfare: Laying the Foundation for Change. Toronto, ON: Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies.